How we became Mobile Working Specialists

Tracline has been an accredited supplier to the NHS and Public Sector for over 25 years and specialise in making computing ‘mobile’.

Partnering with Intel

We partnered with Intel to specify the MCA Clinical Assistant, later brought to market by Panasonic and Motion Computing, and became the largest supplier of these to the NHS, also presenting on the usability of mobile devices in the Health sector.

Mobile devices can be difficult to design for a number of reasons and the price hard to obtain and so we've evaluated, advised and recommended tablets, laptops, convertibles and phones knowing that each case requires a different solution.

Testing Cellular & Wi-Fi

Because devices for Mobile Working need to make the most of suboptimal radio signals, we evaluate and test cellular and Wi-Fi performance, using refining techniques to measure the performance differences between aerial systems, modems and drivers.

Engaging in fieldwork, observing non-IT users, showed us how incomprehensible they found connectivity issues and how helpless they felt, so we developed a prototype of STATUS embodying their suggestions, and helping them understand and take control.

Aiming to be the Best

You want your staff to be the best without being handicapped by technology, so our design of STATUS is unremittingly focused on making their experience exceptional.

As an airtime supplier, we found it hard to support our users because it was impossible to see what their devices were doing and could not confirm if their devices were working properly. STATUS enabled us to start collecting information on connections, configurations and flow rates which helped us accurately diagnose and fix faults getting our users back online faster.

Accountability

Audit work on incoming airtime bills suggested we were being overcharged, so we devised systems to reconcile and prove bills, which have given us inbound credits equivalent to six week's airtime. We've built these techniques and insights into VISION Analytics to give our customers insights into their bills too.

To further bolster our exclusive position in the mobile arena, we won a competition run by Innovate UK to make mobile working more resilient and reliable. We brought together a consortium of Network Operators, Network Aggregators and the University of Surrey 5G Innovation centre.

This substantial Government grant enabled to us fully develop all our preliminary ideas and work and bring to market STATUS and VISION, including our project processes, all of which make up our ground-breaking solution for Making Mobile Work.

About Tracline (UK) Ltd

Tracline was established in London, in 1984. Today Tracline is a provider of Hardware, Software, Managed Solutions, Mobile Data Connectivity and Technical resource to some of the biggest NHS organisations throughout England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. The journey the company has taken to arrive at this point has had many turns but as the history below shows, the innovation of software development and the drive to keep ahead of the technological curve are constants which are still employed today.

Early Beginnings - 1980s

Tracline UK Ltd was formed in the early 1980's by Patrick O'Brien and began trading as a software development and deployment company. Its first software release was titled 'Tracline' and was designed for accounting & warehouse-keeping management. Initial users of the software included Supermarkets, Hi-Fi dealerships and Warehouses throughout the UK and Ireland.

Such was the demand for the Tracline software, the company added a distribution arm at the early part of the 1990's which offered both Tracline's boxed software and managed services together with relevant computing hardware & software including Servers, Desktop Computers, Printers, Modems and Microsoft Windows. As the business & needs of the company grew, so did it's spatial requirements and this led to Tracline spreading it's offices across three floors of its premises in Edgware, London.

Server & Desktop Computing - 1990's

During the 1990's Tracline formed a constructive and strong partnership with Siemens Nixdorf and Microsoft when it began to specialise in offering both hardware and software to the NHS in the UK. These partnerships together with a highly-skilled workforce enabled Tracline to offer highly-bespoke computing products to the rapidly growing NHS computing demands. This strategic move led to many successful partnerships with NHS trusts of which many are still engaged with us today.

Towards the end of the 1990s, Tracline also focused on the educational sector recognising the crossover potential of its offerings in Health. This move culminated when Tracline purchased Lynx Education in 1998 which enabled the company to offer many more products and access to a greater client base. Throughout all this time, the company had stayed ahead of the technological curve and as Laptops and Cellular communications became more prevalent, the company began to lay the foundations of the new computing arena.

Embracing Mobile Working - 2000's

Quickly understanding that Tablet, Laptop and Smartphone computing would have a big and fundamental impact on the effectiveness of Mobile Working Solutions, Tracline in the early part of the 2000's began researching products and technologies that could make a big difference in this new technological realm. Security, Data Compression, Cellular Communications and Mobile Computing were the technologies Tracline honed at an early stage.

Partnerships with the best technological providers in these key fields enabled the company to offer its best technological solutions of the day. Companies outside the NHS began to recognise Tracline's expertise in this new area and blue-chip companies such as HSBC trusted Tracline to implement it's data compression needs to speed up it's mobile working networks. This was followed by many other industries from schools to banking that wished to utilise these new technologies.

After the economic problems in the World from 2008, NHS Organisations needed to justify their technological spending far more than before. Although our industry lost many competitors during this time, Tracline embraced the new reality and started building a more complex and precise ROI models to help organisations justify their technological costs. This is true for both multi-million pound projects and niche purchases.

Security & Data Compression - 2010's

In 2012 the company moved its headquarters to Harefield near Rickmansworth. This new purchased facility provides the perfect facilities to develop the latest venture into mobile communications.

In 2014 we developed a new monitoring and management tool for all organisations that use mobile working. This work has been recognised by the government by awarding Tracline a grant of several hundred thousand pounds to develop this approach. The government grant was awarded by Innovate UK in 2016.

In the last eighteen months Tracline has successfully deployed a number of large “Roll outs” across England and Wales. These roll outs include Network Data SIMs, Devices and Consultancy. The company is now perfectly placed to build on this success in the ever growing subject of Mobile Working.